Asda has delisted two thirds of the cheeses in Blur bassist Alex James’s range after some of his more experimental flavours failed to win over the public.

Despite booming early sales after the range was launched in a blaze of publicity last summer, Asda started pulling the cheeses off shelves within months.

Cheddar with salad cream slices lasted just 12 weeks before being dropped in November, while cheddar with ketchup was pulled just before Christmas. The tikka masala variety clung on until February. and the sliced version of tomatoey cheese was delisted in March.

However, one of the experimental cheeses remains - cheddar with sweet chilli.

“The sweet chilli variety is really popular,” said a spokeswoman for Asda. “The cheddar with spring onion is also excellent.

“Originally we trialled nine SKUs, which is a lot for a first brand, but we wanted to see what customers thought of the crazier, wackier ones and clearly some of them were ahead of their time - Alex would say that too. But he wanted to do something family friendly and fun in a category that is led by block cheddar,” she added.

A spokeswoman for James said the successful cheeses had now rolled out in double the number of Asda stores. She added that he was working on new flavours, and one top-secret combination was proving to be “a real crowd pleaser”.

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